Data roaming costs

The cost of using a data card or mobile phone abroad amazes me. On Orange, data costs £3 per Mb when abroad.

There is an EU ruling that no operator can charge more than £40 in one month for data roaming, after a few horror stories where travellers streamed a video or radio only to return home and see a bill for several hundred pounds.

I can understand that there’s a cost overhead of integrating billing systems between operators, however these charges appear to be just a huge cash cow for the networks, which only drives people away from using them.

The answer is to use free Wifi, available in most hotels and airports, in fact most public places around the world.